naa a22 4500 510776876 CHVBK 20180411083233.0 cr unu---uuuuu 180411e20130901xx s 000 0 eng 10.3758/s13428-012-0278-x doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.3758/s13428-012-0278-x Semantic diversity: A measure of semantic ambiguity based on variability in the contextual usage of words [Elektronische Daten] [Paul Hoffman, Matthew Lambon Ralph, Timothy Rogers] Semantic ambiguity is typically measured by summing the number of senses or dictionary definitions that a word has. Such measures are somewhat subjective and may not adequately capture the full extent of variation in word meaning, particularly for polysemous words that can be used in many different ways, with subtle shifts in meaning. Here, we describe an alternative, computationally derived measure of ambiguity based on the proposal that the meanings of words vary continuously as a function of their contexts. On this view, words that appear in a wide range of contexts on diverse topics are more variable in meaning than those that appear in a restricted set of similar contexts. To quantify this variation, we performed latent semantic analysis on a large text corpus to estimate the semantic similarities of different linguistic contexts. From these estimates, we calculated the degree to which the different contexts associated with a given word vary in their meanings. We term this quantity a word's semantic diversity (SemD). We suggest that this approach provides an objective way of quantifying the subtle, context-dependent variations in word meaning that are often present in language. We demonstrate that SemD is correlated with other measures of ambiguity and contextual variability, as well as with frequency and imageability. We also show that SemD is a strong predictor of performance in semantic judgments in healthy individuals and in patients with semantic deficits, accounting for unique variance beyond that of other predictors. SemD values for over 30,000 English words are provided as supplementary materials. Psychonomic Society, Inc., 2012 Semantic cognition nationallicence Semantic ambiguity nationallicence Polysemy nationallicence Linguistic context nationallicence Hoffman Paul Neuroscience and Aphasia Research Unit (NARU), School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester, Zochonis Building, Oxford Road, M13 9PL, Manchester, UK aut Lambon Ralph Matthew Neuroscience and Aphasia Research Unit (NARU), School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester, Zochonis Building, Oxford Road, M13 9PL, Manchester, UK aut Rogers Timothy University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA aut Behavior Research Methods Springer US; http://www.springer-ny.com 45/3(2013-09-01), 718-730 45:3<718 2013 45 13428 https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-012-0278-x text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-012-0278-x text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Hoffman Paul Neuroscience and Aphasia Research Unit (NARU), School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester, Zochonis Building, Oxford Road, M13 9PL, Manchester, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Lambon Ralph Matthew Neuroscience and Aphasia Research Unit (NARU), School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester, Zochonis Building, Oxford Road, M13 9PL, Manchester, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Rogers Timothy University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Behavior Research Methods Springer US; http://www.springer-ny.com 45/3(2013-09-01), 718-730 45:3<718 2013 45 13428 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer